GeForce GTS 450 SLI: a Happy Pair. Page 10

Despite its budget status, Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 supports SLI technology fully. Once we got our hands on the second GF106 based graphics card, we decided to check out its performance in a tandem with another GeForce GTS 450. Read the details in our new review!

Performance in Synthetic and Semi-Synthetic Benchmarks

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

We minimize the CPU’s influence by using the Extreme profile (1920x1200, 4x FSAA and anisotropic filtering). We also publish the results of the individual tests across all resolutions.

The GeForce GTS 450 SLI is only second to the Radeon HD 5870 in terms of overall score. It scores over 8000 points, which is quite good for a $250 solution. Judging by these results, a dual-GF106 card would be quite fast, yet we already know that the real games do not agree on this point.

The first test shows that the GeForce GTS 450 SLI feels just as uncomfortable as in most of the games. It is better in the second test, being competitive to the GeForce GTX 470 through the end and to the Radeon HD 5870 at resolutions below 2560x1600.

Final Fantasy XIV Official Benchmark

This benchmark produces an incomprehensible result in points, so we use Fraps to get more understandable numbers. It can only run at 1280x720 and 1920x1080.

We've got nothing new here: the GeForce GTS 450 SLI is comparable to the single GeForce GTX 470 at low resolutions and slower at high resolutions. AMD's RV870-based solutions still have the top places in the Full HD mode.

Unigine Heaven Benchmark

The SLI tandem doesn’t show anything exceptional in this Fermi-optimized benchmark, being inferior to the GeForce GTX 470 in terms of average speed. Fortunately, it doesn't have a performance hit at 2560x1600.